Shane Mage wrote:
It is the opposite--a movement from a backward bureaucratic
state capitalism, which reflected the semi-feudal and dependent colonial
structures inherited by the CCP, towards a modern, globalized capitalism
in which the proletariat is growing by leaps and bounds, in numbers,
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2008/02/19/nacional/artic10.html
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/feeling-a-bit-peaked/
Eric wrote:
Hi Louis, I'm sad to see your comment below. Comrades should not speak to
each other like this.
With due zealotry and certainty, Louis protects the sacred flame of
Marxism (tm) against anybody tempted to dim it by standing anywhere
near the Brenner Thesis, China, Ahmedinajad,
Louis Proyect wrote:
I thought it was fairly shrewd of him [David Brooks] to make the case
that the next Democratic president will run the country like Bill Clinton,
whether it is his wife or that change guy.
It's not shrewdness. It's wishful thinking.
Of course, in politics, anything can
Doug wrote:
By almost any orthodox economic measure, the U.S. is due for an
austerity program. The consumption share of GDP is over 70%, up from
67% a decade ago, and 62% at the end of the 1970s. There was an
unprecedented housing boom and massive mortgage borrowing. Household
savings are 0
Doug wrote:
Nothing's ever impossible, but why would a new president pursue them
[non-orthodox policies]?
Because they need to buy more time, more political wiggle room for capitalism.
I wish the next president would appoint Julio Huato chair of the CEA, but I
don't
think that's likely
Jim Devine wrote:
Sure, I'm going to vote for whomever the Dems choose, to prevent the
current version of Bush from being elected. But I know that the vote
is wasted. It's totally harmless to the corporations. (Besides, as
the anarchists say, if voting could change the system it would be
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/10/politics/main3813759.shtml
Jim Devine wrote:
On the other hand, if Clinton is elected, she'll probably turn out to
be as bad as Obama would be. But it would be a sign that at least some
of the struggle against sexism has been successful.
Yet on the third hand, if McCain wins he may turn out to be as good as Bush!
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3814250n
Carrol wrote:
When a national coalition to replace the DP-Pimps at UFPJ ==
When something somewhere entirely unexpected and unpredictable now
occurs [e.g., Walmart employees emulate the Fisher Body Sit Down Strike)
--
When 50,000 white, black, asian marchers come out to a pro-illegal
Jim Devine wrote:
I know it's a cliché, but whatever happened to optimism of the will,
pessimism of the intellect?
How is voting for Hillary, McCain, Huckabee, Paul, Gravel, Nader, the
SWP, etc. -- or not voting! -- a manifestation of this optimism of
the will?
Carrol wrote:
It seems to me that to put one's hopes in either
Obama or Clinton is to express utter despair.
And putting your hopes in Nader is a sign of cheerfulness? (It's odd
to have the words cheerfulness and Nader in the same sentence.)
C'mon everybody in the U.S. Go out and vote. For Obama, of course.
Then keep doing whatever you're doing to advance socialism in the
world.
Carrol is right. Individually, in isolation, the decision to vote or
not vote (and for whom) makes an infinitesimally small difference.
Negligible. If you rule out the improbable event of an extremely,
tightly contested election, a few votes make no difference whatever.
So, the decision has to
Just a quick addendum to my argument that a broader social base of
support makes Obama less likely than Clinton to get in the way of the
social struggle for out of Iraq and universal health care:
The political stock of progressives (or whichever way you call that
mass of people, loosely
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8390223
P Samuelson wrote:
Since we live ever in the short run...
Before that he wrote:
When I come to write a newspaper article like this 10 years from now,
I believe America may still be leading the pack in per-capita
affluence.
He was born in 1915.
http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/75/Economic_Indoctrination.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vD5CqfchvmhI.asf
Patrick,
I just read your article on the Global Crisis. I'm not really sure I
get your point about over-accumulation.
First, it's not clear to me whether over-accumulation is, in your
view, (1) a chronic, systemic condition of capitalism, (2) a tendency
in a given stage in the history of
Patrick Bond wrote:
Very eloquent summary, Julio, which is excellent but for the lack of
attention to the overaccumulation dynamic. Doesn't that feature in your
story? (That's also where Sam, Leo, Doug, Giovanni and a few others
depart from the crisis theorists.)
Thanks, Patrick. Well, I
Only to report to PEN-L that, after 2 years and 9 months of unjust
imprisonment in Queretaro, Mexico for helping workers in their fight
for better living conditions, Cristina Rosas Illescas has been
released. She is thanking all those who supported her. (Thanks
Yoshie for publishing an article I
Doyle wrote:
The intelligence agencies of the U.S. have implied this end of
neoliberalism would open the door to a revived Marxism.
To the extent Greenspan's Age of Turbulence is not a inane act of
self-rationalization, of public exculpation of his past sins, it is an
equally dull attempt to
Jim Devine wrote:
While there can be sectoral over- or under-accumulation, there can be
macro-level over-accumulation, too, which then leads to something
which might be called under-accumulation but that term seems
confusing. (the idea of alternating under- and over-accumulation in
different
Michael Perelman wrote:
I don't think so. Admittedly, the finals weeks have been draining.
Right. The finals.
Taking a break from marking and grading. My telegraphic opinion re.
the prospects of capitalism is that capitalism is a bundle. We need
to un-bundle it a bit -- to the extent most
http://www.rgemonitor.com/latam-monitor/498/chile_-_venezuela__the_hidden_weakness_of_a_strong_economy
Hoping to get a bit more input from people, I removed the registration
hurdle of the wiki. Feel free to stop by and write/edit your soul
away. Thanks Doyle for going through the trouble of registering. :)
http://usprogress.wetpaint.com/
What the economists consider as systemic (or macro) risk under
capitalism includes a lot of faux systemic risk -- i.e. risk that
arises from the specific nature of capitalism. As I suggested, *that*
risk is entirely diversifiable... by building communism. Remember,
the economists consider the
I haven't read all the messages on this thread. Just a quick note
out of nowhere. There's ambiguity in the notion of moral hazard as
it used in economics.
In general, it refers to cases in which insurance (in any form) shifts
the best actions of people towards more risk. As such, it's a
http://usprogress.wetpaint.com/
Let's see where it takes us... if anywhere.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/world/americas/30venez.html?hp
raghu wrote:
Interesting column in the FT by Martin Wolf about the bids to buy Northern
Rock.
Another column by Wolf that might also be of interest here:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afd6e830-978b-11dc-9e08-779fd2ac.html
Why is the FT more bearish than the WSJ?
And this one by L Summers:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afd6e830-978b-11dc-9e08-779fd2ac.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vUnG6vlnj7ec.asf
Jason Funke linked:
http://artofmentalwarfare.com/pog/
Videos are powerful agitational devices. However, before an
agitational campaign is launched, one needs -- as they used to say --
a tactical plan and a strategy to underpin it.
In Mexico, today, a broad group of left-wing intellectuals
I wrote:
The opportunity to harness this energy will not last very long.
[...]
Wait for Hillary or whoever to get elected and see what happens.
I meant for the latter sentence to follow the former immediately.
http://www.cepal.org/publicaciones/xml/5/30305/PSE2007_Sintesis_Lanzamiento.pdf
Venezuela (Rep. Bolivariana de)
YearPoverty Extreme poverty
200248,622,2
200537,115,9
200630,29,9
Por su parte, la República Bolivariana de Venezuela logró disminuir
sus tasas de pobreza e
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/bush200712
Departing a bit from the merely economic or politic, this caused a
very enthusiastic impression on the critics:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/arts/music/14boli.html?ref=music
Jim,
It's only on the macroeconomic level that the objective centers of
gravity of prices are the values.
Clearly, that was the context.
Clearly, these values are the social aggregate (average) of private
expectations about the amounts of social labor required to reproduce
the MP and LP in
Jayson Funke wrote:
are we not essentially in a situation in which global
currencies are valued around the US dollar, and the value of the US dollar,
de-linked from gold, is valued on financial market perceptions of the
ability of the US to meet its debt obligations (ie. the ability of the
Doug wrote:
Its supply [gold's] is
strictly limited.
The argument for gold has too many holes to poke them all at once.
What does strictly mean here? Does it mean peak gold cum zero
elasticity of demand? On the other hand, is the indebtedness of the
U.S. Treasury unbounded? Apparently,
Doug wrote:
And central banks can throw scores of billions at troubled
markets under the present system; try that with a gold standard.
Isn't that a strong argument against the gold standard? At least
that's how Keynesians have viewed it. Can moral hazard be dealt with
within the present
Shane Mage wrote:
What meaning can the true probability distribution have here?
Probability distribution (objective) can apply to the outcome of a
series of random events like throws of dice or spins of a roulette
wheel, or to (subjective) *an* estimate of the likelihood of
various (mutually
Doug wrote:
There's a curious asymmetry here.
When the markets are zooming
upwards, it's meaningless
speculation. When they're
collapsing, it's fraught with
meaning.
I don't see the inconsistency in saying that speculation disconnects
asset prices from long-run fundamentals and that their
Michael Perelman wrote:
But, we never really know what
the fundamentals are, other than
they are not too euphoric or not
too pessimistic.
We never know the true probability distribution of *any* interesting
variable in the social sciences. That includes the ever shifting
fundamental price
Doug wrote:
Not exactly. The markets were
very disappointed with Bernanke's
testimony yesterday because he
made it sound as if another rate cut
is not imminent. Should things
really unwind, they'll undoubtedly
change their mind, but the message
they're sending now is no rate cuts
unless
Maybe the real challenges of Venezuela's oil industry are a bit over
(NYT's) Tina Rosenberg's head. Here's a point by point refutation of
her hit job. It deserves to be read:
http://oilwars.blogspot.com/2007/11/tina-rosenberg-goes-to-school-on.html
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xuzf1_estado-de-sitio-costa-gavras-1973_politics
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2784
The Bolivarian Project
Without Workers Management There Can Be No Socialism
October 30th 2007, by Kiraz Janicke – Venezuelanalysis.com
Over the weekend of October 26 to 27, several hundred people attended
a two day conference on Worker's Management:
The New York Times
October 22, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Gone Baby Gone
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It pains me to say this, but this time Alan Greenspan is right about housing.
Mr. Greenspan was wrong in 2004, when he sang the praises of
adjustable-rate mortgages. He was wrong in 2005, when he dismissed the
I'm not sure Bloomberg still has this video up. It just disappeared
from the list of links to its recent videos. The audio sucks during
the first 45 min or so.
http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/viOn6lTGkCEE.asf
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/world/americas/22bank.html
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=8e9862a9f3a8216027ef2f9ecd1c3bc5345b4134
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/meeting-resistance/
Excellent review, Louis!
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1538104320071015
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/2719
Reports from other sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086sid=aYUzqdrconXMrefer=latin_america
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,2189350,00.html
http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/14/stories/2007101456591400.htm
No comment on Hurwicz or the other winners of the Nobel in economics?
(I know, it's not the Nobel in economics, but that's the way regular
people call it.)
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/593/haves-have-nots
Doug wrote:
We should have subordinated the
fight against racism and sexism
to the class struggle, like the
most idiotic of Stalinists used
to argue? (Not the CPUSA, which
had a pretty good record on sex
and especially race.)
I'd argue that, under some conditions (e.g. Iran's conditions
Apologies to the list. The previous note was intended to lbo-talk.
http://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/151blinder.pdf
Do I understand the implication correctly? Does this paper show that
a monetary policy under the full and direct democratic control of the
demos would be superior -- and not slower to implement -- than a
monetary policy dictated by a
I find this very interesting.
The FT also has a full-page interview with Noami Klein covering her
book with the usual snide remarks about her views.
I think it speaks volumes of the deep insecurity the high priests of
capitalism currently feel about their mode of production. They
wouldn't need
I just rush-read the transcript of Greenspan's (and Klein's) interview
by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now. I was also tempted to do Monday
morning quarterbacking, but I find Goodman's show to be -- very
consistently -- great. (Producing a daily Democracy Now must be very
tough. And Klein did what
Louis Proyect transcribes the NYT blogging on Ahmadinejad at Columbia:
Pressed by Dean Coatsworth on the
original question about the rights
of gay men and lesbians in Iran,
Mr. Ahmadinejad said: In Iran, we
don't have homosexuals like in your
country. We don't have that in our
country.
I
I wrote:
Obviously, U.S. imperialism and
Zionism are minor issues compared
to the much more pressing demand
for full individual rights for
gays in Iran
Oops, I meant to add the following immediately afterwards:
, demand that remains unfulfilled mainly as a result of the political
Doug wrote:
He was elected, and has the backing
of the Supreme Leader, who speaks
with god and is therefore above
democracy.
Like in the U.S., god is irrelevant in Iranian politics. The populace
there (as here) is above and beyond that. More importantly,
Ahmadinejad betrayed the mandate of
Now that it's free, I'm glad to invite clicks to Krugman's blog,
devoted to international economics and finance issues. (He keeps
being on the right side of the issues -- witness his latest column on
Jena: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html)
Michael Lebowitz wrote:
WOW, my old student! Bright guy; I was
afraid he'd been warped by grad school.
Good paper. Grad school is like capitalism.
I know that was a catchy subject line -- and apparently factually
true. That's not the only reason why this article is interesting
though.
* * *
Reflections of President Fidel Castro
The Empire and Its Lies
It was Reagan who created the Cuban American National Foundation,
whose sinister
Sabri wrote:
Here are some random thoughts:
I don't remember this posting on my Gmane RSS feeds page
(http://rss.gmane.org/messages/complete/gmane.science.economics.progressive-economists).
I remember the before and after posts. By looking at the archives
here
Doug Henwood wrote:
Pampers
Can you elaborate?
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9687245
raghu wrote:
The first [attitude] is exemplified
by the principals of LTCM who appear
to have sincerely believed in the
infallibility of their models and
the 25 standard deviations theory.
I don't think this matters much, but FWIW historically:
According to Richard Lowenstein (When Genius
raghu wrote:
Does anyone on the Street actually
believe in these models, or are
they just using it as an excuse to
goose up their asset values? (i.e.
are these guys liar and thieves,
or are they merely naive and stupid?)
With all due respect to raghu personally, what is naive is to think
I wrote:
The objectivity of social structures
is more hardened than that of political
and legal systems,
I meant to write:
The objectivity of *economic* structures is more hardened than that of
political and legal systems,
Doug wrote:
Models can be illuminating. But the
way they're often used in the markets
is to: 1) try to beat the market,
which is impossible over the longer
term, 2) hedge against risk, which
though it makes sense a lot of the
time, is prone to go haywire when
most needed, in a financial
Ted Winslow wrote:
On what rational grounds do you
rule out the possibility that
irrational psychology of a kind
that can't be modeled in this way
is at work in these markets?
Have you made a serious study of
the psychology of greed,
mania and panic?
I don't rule out that possibility.
A contrarian view of the credit mess:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/925b018a-5111-11dc-8e9d-779fd2ac.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d83b3294-51b4-11dc-8779-779fd2ac.html
The link won't work if you are not subscribed. So here's the text:
* * *
Wednesday Aug 22 2007
All times are London time
COMMENT ANALYSIS
Analysis
How the British army lost Basra
By Stephen Fidler
Published: August 20 2007 18:33 | Last updated: August 20 2007 18:33
In the immediate
Robert Wrubel wrote:
Wasn't there also a supply factor,
in an excess of money that needed to
find new outlets for investment?
I replied:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8c9dea94-3e30-11dc-8f6a-779fd2ac.html
The surpluses built up faster as oil and
other commodity prices went up.
Somewhat
Also, if somebody has Henry Kaufman's (WSJ) piece Our Risky New
Financial Markets, please share with the list.
Doug wrote:
One of the many problems with CDOs
and the like is that they're built
by mathematicians who assume that
the markets will always behave
normally.
Since long, people in finance *know* in their minds that the
distribution of returns is nonstationary, that it has memory. On
the
A federal judge in Mexico City ruled yesterday that the workers'
strike in Sombrerete, Zacatecas
(http://www.sombrerete.com.mx/Galerias/somric/somric.html) has legal
existence.
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/08/18/index.php?section=politicaarticle=012n1pol
Doug wrote:
But, looking at history, the odds are
that it's not 1929 all over again.
I'd agree with this. At this point, there's little basis to
anticipate that the mortgage crisis and the turmoil in the markets
will lead to a 1930s type of mess. But there are serious reasons to
think that
Michael Perelman wrote:
Maybe he was with the miners. He is
supposed to be very well known.
His first name is Napoleon. The steel
workers were defending him. He
is probably with the steel workers in the
US now. The government charged him
with corruption, but it seemed like he
was doing
I wrote:
The information is a bit telegraphic, but there's
not much in the newspapers.
I'll correct this. Actually, running searches I did find good
information on the strike and the history of the conflicts on both La
Jornada and El Universal online. So let me start by amending some
things
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070803/ap_en_ce/people_sean_penn_2
Michael Perelman wrote:
Can the head of the union return
to Mexico safely yet?
I didn't know that the head of the union was exiled. How did you learn this?
Sartesian wrote:
Yeah, but the overall size of of the
CDO market, like the $10 trillion
mortgage market itself is not the issue.
The issue is what portion of the
securities become worthless.
Hence the subject line: Contagiousness. At first, one individual gets
infected. Then the
Jim Devine wrote:
last time I checked, the EE exchange
rate was depreciating...
We have been looking at different numbers then. My figures show that
China's RMB, Russia's rouble, India's rupee, Brazilian real, etc. --
i.e. the currencies of the main countries listed by the Economist --
have
http://www.afponline.org/pub/pdf/Liquidity_2007.pdf
And an article by Joseph Stiglitz on the Shanghai Daily. Enjoy!
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/print.asp?id=326522
Scholar-googling recent works on the structure of the credit system in
the U.S., I bumped into this 2006 paper by NYU Stern's Edward I Altman
on the recent boom of credit junk:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~ealtman/Are-Historical-Models-Still-Relevant1.pdf
On July 30, the 1,293 unionized workers (plus 305 temps) of Minera
Cananea in Cananea Sonora, Mexico went on strike. They demand more
safety in the mines, the opening of a local clinic to provide them
with medical care, and recognition of their union representatives.
They've been attacked
Doug wrote:
that's why there are central banks.
They pump cash and make soothing
sounds and hope the worst blows
over.
And it may or may not blow over. I have no idea, in this particular
episode, whether the actions of the central bankers in the last two
days succeeded in calming the
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=1137970231
Phil Izo (WSJ reporter): Do you think it [the central banks' injection
of liquidity] is gonna be enough?
DW (WSJ): I have no idea whether it's gonna be enough. I suspect they
don't know whether it's gonna be enough.
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